MR. DUXBURY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, prestigious members of the panel, and the audience here and the Chair. I will probably appreciably keep this short because what I'm going to say has been said and is probably going to be said again. But I'm a long-time farmer, a livestock man from the state of South Dakota. I was born in the '20s in a similar time to this when the economy was booming, the stock market was smoking. We lost our family farm in the '30s.

We fought two world wars. We killed our cattle and pigs and buried them. We recovered to the point we were in about 1930 to 1960. Here we are again. The gentleman mentioned that we need to take a long-term look at that. How long have we got to look? I have a couple questions here. In the interest of international trade, where do the benefits flow? It's important to me as a producer that they flow back here in the Midwest where we need them, not to Minneapolis or New York or the offices of Cargill or ConAgra. Is it the intent of global trade to transfer the assets to other entities leaving present producers to serve as janitors and doorkeepers, in other words, hauling manure? I'll read you my short statement here, and then I will thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. Presently in South Dakota we are involved in a hardball battle to maintain a competitive and open marketing system. Packers and corporate conglomerates are trying to dominate production and marketing of our livestock and grain products. Market access is being restricted. Predatory pricing and contract arrangements are a source of controversy. Transportation monopolies impact our ability to move our crops to market. Regional cooperatives are using member equity to engage in competition with their own patrons in production agriculture.

Certain commodity groups and farm organizations no longer represent the interests of a large portion on their membership yet continue to collect and expend mandatory check-off funds generated by these producers. Certainly the demand for the products of our agriculture in the world trade are a positive in working through these problems. However, if trade agreements are dominated by the demands of worldwide cartels that are allowed to produce and market at the expense of independent agriculture and in some cases even moving production and processing to foreign countries, we will destroy the very basis that has made U.S. agriculture the power base and wonder of the world. Thank you.